


The Road Home

by InTheGreySpaces



Category: Sparrow Hill Road - Seanan McGuire, Supernatural
Genre: Gen, POV First Person, POV Outsider, Sentient Baby, Sparrowhill Road crossover, Supernatural Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:33:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28834203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTheGreySpaces/pseuds/InTheGreySpaces
Summary: Dean is gravely injured and Death lurks. No matter how fast Baby drives, she'll never make it in time without a little help. And help arrives in the form a long dead ghost whose purpose is to see victims of accidents to the other side, or at least that's what Rose Marshall usually does. On a good night, though, she can turn the tide.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	The Road Home

**Author's Note:**

> I read a spectacular book by Seanan McGuire, "Sparrowhill Road" and fell in love with Rose Marshall, and the idea that the Winchesters could benefit a lot from her and what she knows. They'd make a great team. I also thought Baby might have learned a trick or two about the roads less traveled by the living that may have given her her own supernatural powers. So, here you have it, the first meeting between the Winchesters and Rose Marshall. I think this story started somewhere else, but it became a lot more about Baby in the end. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you're inspired to check out Rose's story written in the author's own hand.
> 
> I own nothing, only gratefully and respectfully borrow.

2004, South Dakota

Damn the cold.

It was winter. Again. So often it was winter of late when I was dumped unceremoniously back into the land of the living.

‘Sans a coat and thank you very fucking much,’ I grumbled at my bleak surroundings and no one in particular, jamming my hands deep into my jeans pockets as if it would do any good. The dead feel nothing but cold, and I was dead, had been for more than thirty-five years. I knew the rules, too, and if I wanted a coat, I was going to have to convince a warm, living person to lend me one. I could materialize just about any outfit I wanted, but nothing resembling a coat. That wasn’t allowed.

I settled on a thick fisherman’s cable knit sweater, frayed appropriately at the hem and cuffs, and a pair of well worn work boots as the winad cut furiously out of the north and made me hunch inside the sweater in memory of the chilly bite if not in actual reaction to it. Suitably attired, I turned a slow circle to take stock of my surroundings. Oddly, I didn’t think I’d ever been on this stretch of road before. There weren’t a lot of places I hadn’t been after all this time, but there were some less traveled back roads, and this must be one of them. I squatted down and pressed my hand to the surface of the pavement. Being, as yet, coatless and incorporeal there wasn’t anything in this world I could touch; but the ghost roads lived under every road, layer upon layer of them, and that was my territory, and I could touch that.

I cocked my head slightly. ‘South Dakota...just north of the Nebraska border,’ I murmured. ‘Interesting choice,’ I said to that same no one in particular I’d addressed a moment ago.

I pushed to standing. The road ran east to west. Most roads up this far north ran a cardinal direction, remnants from the days of navigating by sun and star when it was easiest to keep one or the other directly ahead, behind, or off to the side in the vast, empty openness that this land still mostly was. Roads up here were fewer and farther between and still didn’t see much traffic, especially—I tilted my face up to the night sky—at this hour of the early morning.I had a feeling I had a long walk ahead of me. I sighed, turned east, put my head down against the wind and light flurries that were beginning to blow in with it, pushed my hands to the bottom of my pockets and started walking.

I wasn’t on the road more than twenty minutes before the wind carried me a scent that made my nostrils flair: ashes and honeysuckle. I stopped on the crumbling edge that reached in to break the white line at the side of the long stretch of road and drew in a breath. It was getting stronger, coming closer. I peered into the dark, searching, but I heard the car before I saw it.

No human would have heard it until they could see the hazy flicker and glow of headlights spearing the darkness, lighting the snowflakes in their swirling dance. But I heard it far sooner—heard _her—_ keening in the darkness, straining through the night toward salvation. I was unnerved by her desperation and almost without thinking, I stepped out into the road.

No driver could have stopped that car on this road, in the dark, where black ice was already freezing its stealthy way across the asphalt. But the car knew me, recognized me instantly, and she stopped for her driver, only an inch of her chrome front bumper pressing into the still ghostly flesh of my shins. The driver looked harried, more annoyed than frightened, but not because he’d almost hit a young woman in the middle of no where in the middle of the road. He had something else on his mind.

Not enough apparently to keep him from leveling a sawed-off at me when I leaned down to peer in the passenger window.

He didn’t shoot me, though, and the scent of ashes and honeysuckle had settled into my nostrils so it was all that I could smell. This was the source. I didn’t know how because it was not an accident waiting up the road for this man and his car, otherwise I would be smelling lilies. This was something else. But death was on its way, and I didn’t have long to change its course, if that was still possible. I watched the man’s eyes flicker with emotion, from anger to annoyance to fear. They twitched once to the shadows of the backseat and then he threw the car in park and stepped out on his side, one foot still on the running board, shotgun still leveled at me across the roof of the car.

I would have taken a step back in other circumstances. Most of the living feared guns when they were pointed at them, and I was very good at putting on a show, otherwise I’d be a pretty poor hitcher and rarely get a ride. I at least had to act human. But right now, there wasn’t time, the man’s eyes said that, and the car, rumbling quietly but urgently in front of me said that.

_Help us,_ she keened.

I stood and stared him down. He frowned at me.

‘White Lady?’ he asked.

I lifted a brow, both in surprise that he knew of such things and disdain that he’d mistaken me for one. ‘Do I look dressed for the part?’ I asked, holding out my arms and looking myself up and down.

His brow furrowed further, but the muzzle drifted down a fraction. ‘What are you?’

Not _who_ , I noticed. Interesting. ‘I’m Rose,’ I said, almost expecting him to recognize the name; and maybe he would have on another day on another road, but not tonight.

_Hurry,_ the engine whispered. _Hurry._

‘I’m here to help,’ I added, moving my hands to a more traditional posture of surrender at my sides.

He seemed to consider me for a fraction of a second and then, ‘Go to hell, or back to whatever hole you crawled out of.’ He slid into the he driver’s seat again. ‘I don’t have time for you.’

I don’t normally pull the moving-through-solid-objects trick in plain view of the living. It defeats the purpose and pretty much freaks them out beyond any point of my being useful. But as the driver’s door slammed and the man yanked the car back into gear, I could hear her mournful pleading rise in pitch. This man had named me a White Lady, and he didn’t seem at all disturbed to see a young woman, inappropriately dressed for the current weather, by the side of the road and miles from civilization, which meant his version of strange and unusual was way outside the normal playbook for most of the living. So without a second thought, I slid through the door and into the passenger seat just as the tires spun and caught traction on the slicking pavement.

The move surprised him. Even the most prepared ghost hunters get freaked when their quarry shows up for real and starts performing party tricks.

‘Son of a bitch!’ he snapped, jerking the car back from the sudden swerve she had taken in his shock. He’d thrown the sawed-off into the seat beside him, but it had rolled into the passenger footwell when the car swerved. I touched the dash and whispered a silent ‘thank you’ to her. My brain was beginning to draw threads together that I had heard in passing from other hitchers and routewitches, about a sleek black beast of a car and a madman with vengeance in his eyes traveling the night roads with two boys, hunting. Always hunting. I searched my brain for a name...Wilson? Winslow...? Mmmmm, Winchester. Right, like the gun, Frankie had said at the Last Dance Diner an indeterminate amount of time ago.

‘I think it’d be best to steer clear of them,’ Emma had said quietly, buffing a malted glass to a shine in the low light.

‘Damn straight,’ Frankie agreed. He was another hitcher, like me, younger, but he’d been around, and he was good at his job. ‘I’ve heard stories about them. They hunt things like us.’

‘Hitchers?’ I asked between sips on the straw buried in one of Emma’s strawberry malteds.

‘Mmmm,’ Emma hummed. ‘Everything.’

‘Everything like animals and stuff,’ I queried irritably.

‘Everything like ghosts and stuff,’ Frankie volunteered. ‘Werewolves, vampires, poltergeists, all that...supernatural stuff.’

‘Werewolves don’t exist,’ I scoffed.

Frankie starred and the baen sidhe behind the counter just blinked at me slowly. What can I say, I did have my young and dumb death days. I knew poltergeists were a thing and Ladies in White and even Maggy Dhus because they were all spirits, born of the dead one way or another, but werewolves and vampires? Oh my. I rolled my eyes.

‘Fantastic,’ I sighed. ‘Just when I thought I had it all under control.’

So the word on the ghost roads was to stay away from the Winchesters three because they didn’t discriminate when it came to all things non-human, and they were very smart for living souls in search of dead things. From what I’d heard they stuck to the basics that worked, no silly stuff, which meant that sawed-off was likely full of salt. My whispered thanks went unanswered, but the car was focused, still straining into the night and the road ahead of her.

‘I’m here to help,’ I said again, firmly.

‘I don’t need your help,’ the man snapped, but he didn’t slow the car in any attempt to get me out of it, whether he was considering that it would be pretty difficult to push an incorporeal girl out of the passenger seat or something more pressing was driving him, I wasn’t sure just yet. And I had to agree that, no, this man didn’t need my help—I was beginning to think it was the car that had called me from down the road and had little to do with the man driving it—but the smell of honeysuckle was nearly overpowering and turning over into another scent, one much more familiar. Like lilies. One thing was obvious, and that was that I was running out of time. If I didn’t figure out what I was doing here, and soon, the only purpose I could serve would be to see that The Last Dance got a couple of new customers before they moved on.

Couple of new...? Dammit. My attention jerked to the back seat. My subconscious had registered what my normal senses had not, or maybe it was my hand still at the dash, the car filtering her need and silent pleas into me.

_The boy..._ she whispered.

I peered over the seat. I could see in the dark just fine. The Twilight offered nothing but violet and grey and bruised looking skies, so my night vision was excellent, and I could see that the boy—not really a boy because he was certainly older than me, or at least older than I had been when I died—was bloody, sweaty, and delirious from fever.

‘Don’t touch him,’ the man snapped, teeth gnashing like a cornered wolf.

I gave him a scathing look and passed my hand down through the dash. ‘Ghost, remember?’

He cursed under his breath. In Latin. I lifted an eyebrow, then sighed, ‘Look, I think we really got off on the wrong foot here. I’m Rose. Rose Marshall.’

His brow furrowed, like a memory was tickling him, and it probably was. A man in his line of work would not likely have missed my story, but the weight of the young man lying across the bench seat in the back was blocking out just about everything else for this man.

‘John,’ he said finally.

‘John Winchester,’ I said, nodding. He shot me a sideways look, and I shrugged. ‘Your name gets around. You’re not all that popular with my crowd given your...profession.’ I gestured with a jut of my chin over the seat, ‘And he is...?’

‘Dean,’ John said grudgingly, gaze softening for a fraction of an instant as it passed over the boy. And he was a boy to John, he was his son, I wasn’t ignorant enough not to see that.

‘He’s dying,’ I said.

John jolted hard, the wheel twisting in his hands, but the car kept going, the swerve barely noticeable. She was doing more of the driving right now than John was. I measured his reaction: he’d nearly hit a teenage girl in the middle of the road, a ghost had invited herself into his car, and only the fact of his son’s impending death was enough to rattle him. I knew then what I had to do.

‘Where are you headed?’ I asked.

He scowled a moment and I almost expected him to deny me an answer, to tell me it was none of my damn business, but he hissed out a breath and spoke. ‘Blue Earth.’

I mulled for a second. ‘Blue Earth, Minnesota.’ I’d been there a couple of times, passing through on my way somewhere else. Nothing there to spark the attention or draw a person so far as I could remember.

‘There’s a...man there who can help us,’ John said as if he’d been reading my thoughts. ‘But only if I make it in time.’

The last words were barely a breath.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Black Dog,’ he said tightly.

My gaze snapped to the backseat, Dean’s pale almost grey skin, the blood streaking every visible patch of skin not wrapped in leather or denim. ‘You know what that means.’

John knew I wasn’t asking as well as he knew the answer. The bite of a Black Dog, a Maggy Dhu, was lethal. It was only a matter of how long and the strength of the soul of the person who’d been bitten.

‘He was clawed,’ John said quickly, ‘not bitten.’

I raised an eyebrow. That was unknown territory for me. I’d never heard of a Maggy Dhu clawing anyone to death, they usually didn’t waste the time and effort.

‘And this man,’ I asked, ‘he’s not just a doctor you can trust?’

‘No. He’s...a lot more than that.’

I considered a moment, took in the fuzzy look around Dean’s edges, the one that said his soul was slowly coming loose of his body, and breathed in the mixed scent of ash and honeysuckle and lily. ‘Blue Earth it is,’ I said.

The next part was going to be a little trickier. I needed a coat. I had to be corporeal for this trick, oddly enough. But John already knew what I was, and the rules said I couldn’t directly ask, or it wouldn’t work, so I had to choose my words carefully.

‘You know,’ I said purposefully, ‘it was awfully cold out on the road tonight.’

John looked at me askance, like I figured he would. Why would the cold matter to a ghost, to someone who’d been dead nearly forty years? But rules were rules, and I waited patiently while his brain spun out and back, hauling in the thread of a story from some diner somewhere along all the roads he’d traveled that spoke of a girl hitching for a ride, a girl who was always cold and always needed a coat.

John searched the car cursorily, rooting around behind the seat in a bag, then finally he shrugged a shoulder and divested it of his heavy leather coat, then he shrugged the other and yanked it out from under him, eyes still riveted on the road ahead. He offered it across the seat. I reached out and curled my fingers, feeling warm, worn leather against my skin, thousands of miles and the smell of gunpowder, salt, earth and fire. It felt good to be real again.

1 scrambled over the seat back and knelt on the center hump. I clasped Dean's wrist. His skin was cold and clammy and his pulse was thready under the thin skin there. Then 1 reached forward and laid my hand against John's shoulder, he flinched a little, I couldn't blame him.

'Drive,' I said. 'Drive like you've never driven before.'

John hesitated. I felt his indecision through my palm. 'The road... the weather... ' he drifted off and a thousand thoughts followed, banal things like cops with nothing better to do and folks out with nowhere better to be, wild animals that didn't see enough traffic to have the bright glare of oncoming headlights written into their DNA as danger.

I pressed my cheek to the leather of the seat and listened. I could still hear her, muttering to herself about her old age, how it had slowed her down over the years despite the tender, constant care she received, and I could feel her fear, born out of love, a love that could only be attained by the strongest of connections to a human. She had been very well loved over the years and it had brought her to life, of a sort. I whispered silently my intentions to her and this time I felt her response in the vibration through the seat pressed to my cheek.

I had only tried this on a few occasions and it hadn't involved a car and only ever with one person at a time. This car was different though, and I think she already knew where to go, I only had to show her how to get there. As for John and Dean, well they'd be no worse off if it didn't work, except that Dean would probably die because Blue Earth was still six hours away by the roads of the living and as strong as the kid was, he wasn't going to be able to hold on that long. I caught John's eyes in the rearview mirror. 'Drive,' I said again. 'She knows where to go.'

John didn’t ask who I was referring to. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator.

For my part, I drew us down. Down and down until the dark, snowy sky above us morphed into bruised shades of purple and midnight blue. The snowflakes stopped falling, became stationary flecks of reflected headlights. I knew the moment we dropped onto the ghost roads. I felt the car shudder, like she was shaking herself free of bonds she didn't even know she wore, and she lunged forward in glee and anticipation.

Over the next hour we rose and fell through the layers, straightening out the road, finding the shortest route from where we were to where we needed to be. I was right, the car didn't need my help. I pointed out the street sign and she knew exactly where to go. I'm still not sure if John ever realized he'd quit being in control of the car the moment we slipped into the Twilight, or if he even realized where we'd gone. If he did, he never said.

The sun was cresting the horizon, the thinnest ribbon of gold just beginning to draw pink out of the indigo of the night, and a dusting of snow to dampen the sound of our early morning arrival as we rose up to the hard asphalt in the land of the living and rolled down a street in an old part of town where there were still cobbles in the streets and stopped in front of a modest two story house, well kept, with a wide porch. The man we’d come to see was at the top of the steps waiting, wrapped in a thick cardigan similar in style to what I’d chosen earlier in the night.

I wasn’t privy to much of what happened afterward. John and the man, Jim, I thought I heard John say, hauled Dean unceremoniously out of the back seat and up the stairs into the house before prying eyes might catch a glimpse of the odd scene. I stayed by the car, caressing her roof, speaking to her on some level, hushing her silent sounds of distress, telling her what a good job she’d done. I figured my time here was done. I’d fulfilled my purpose, what happened now was in someone else’s hands. I moved to the porch steps, shrugging out of the coat slowly, reluctant to give up its warmth, not that it would last much longer anyway with the sun rising.

Jim had left the door open, intentionally or not, I wasn’t certain, and even though there was no wind, the morning air was still chill. I reached to shut it quietly before I took my leave, but it was stopped by a foot. I looked up quickly. There was another young man standing in the door. He had a mop of dark hair and sunburst eyes. He was handsome in a boyish way, long and lanky, still trying to find his full height. I stared at him. His multi-layered eyes were full of worry and just a little familiar. Like John’s.

‘Pastor Jim said to ask you to stay,’ he said softly, holding out a steaming mug that my nose told me was hot cocoa. John’s coat was still clutched in my fingers. I glanced over my shoulder at the lightening sky. It’s power wasn’t going to last long. I looked back at the boy, held the coat out.

‘Trade you,’ I said, gesturing to the dark grey hoodie he wore with “Stanford” plastered across the front that was two sizes too big for him.

He took the strange request in his stride, set the mug down on the boards at our feet long enough to pull the hoodie over his head in one smooth motion and hand it to me. I gave him the coat. He didn’t put it on, but bent down to retrieve the cocoa and handed it to me when I came up for air from the folds of the cavernous hoodie. I took the mug in both hands and reveled in the warmth.

The boy swung the door wide so I could come in past him, and then closed it with a soft click. I stood, uncertain, in the foyer looking up the stairs in the direction John and Jim had taken Dean where I could hear fierce muttering and quick, efficient motion going on. The boy draped John's coat on the banister and motioned me into a sitting room to the right of the hallway that ran past the stairs. A large front window was open to the street and a hearth complete with small homey fire was opposite the hallway door. In the corner, a small Christmas tree glittered with tinsel and multicolored lights.

This was not my usual fare. It had been a very long time since I'd actually stepped foot in a house, much less one that was very obviously a home. I stared at my surroundings in silence.

'I'm Sam,' the boy said behind me.

I turned to look at him, my nose still hovering over the edge of the hot mug. 'Rose,' I replied.

He stood with his hands jammed in his pockets and his shoulders pulled up around his ears. His gaze was focused on me, but his attention was on the activity upstairs, sounds drifted down, muffled by the floorboard above us.

'Jim was about to fix breakfast,' Sam said, 'but I can get you some toast or something in the meantime. If you'd like.'

I did like. Diner food was my usual fair and I relished a juicy burger and plate full of fries, but a simple piece of toast with butter and jam sounded just as heavenly. I shook my head, though, and sipped my cocoa, perching on an ottoman between the hearth and Christmas tree.

'I'm good,' I said, 'but thanks.'

Sam nodded and sidled into the room. He didn't sit. He wasn't afraid of me, but tension was written in every line of his body, fury humming beneath it.

‘What day is it?' I asked, sincerely curious, but also wanting to distract him.

He blinked at me once, but if the question threw him, he didn't let it show. He was definitely his father's son.

'Christmas Eve,' he answered.

'Mmm. Well, Sam,' I said smiling over my mug, 'In case I don't see you: Merry Christmas.'

He scowled at that, but it didn't last long because heavy footfalls sounded on the stairs behind him and he spun around as John came pounding down, grabbing his coat and slinging it on as he went for the front door. He paused just long enough to meet my gaze and nod to me.

‘Rose.'

His eyes slid to Sam for less than a heartbeat and then he was out the door and crunching through the snow. The car's engine roared to life and it was tearing away from the curb a moment later.

'Bastard,' Sam spat and swung himself up the stairs and was gone just as fast as the car had been.

I was left alone in the cozy little front room with my hot cocoa and my borrowed hoodie. It was the perfect opportunity to slip away—I wasn't needed here anymore—and I probably should have; but it had been a very long time since I had felt the warmth of a fire against my skin.

I cupped the mug in both hands and held it close to my chest, and let my eyes slip closed.

I don't know if I actually slept—I'm still not sure if that's possible for a ghost—or if time just jumped over me like so often happens when you're dead; but the next thing I was aware of was the smell of bacon and rich maple syrup, and I opened my eyes to Jim setting a plate on a TV tray in front of me, heaped high with scrambled eggs, bacon, and waffles smothered in syrup.

'I thought you might be hungry,' he said gently and settled into the rocker on the other side of the tree, his gaze quietly accessing.

My cocoa had cooled, so I must have been out for a while, wherever ‘out’ for me was, but there was a steaming cup of coffee on the tray and traded one mug for the other before meeting the man’s curious, intent gaze.

‘Are you a routewitch?’ I asked, dispensing with the pleasantries.

Jim laughed softly and brought his own steaming mug of coffee to his lips, shaking his head in amusement. ‘No. That would be John.’

I felt my eyes widen, and Jim’s smile broadened. ‘Not that he knows it, and he’ll never learn it from me.’ He gestured to the tray in front of me, ‘Eat. Before it gets cold. Sam says my waffles are second to none.’

I took a gulp of hot coffee and then greedily dug into the heaping plate. The rich sweetness of the maple syrup burst over my tongue, and he’d melted sharp cheddar on the scrambled eggs and doused them in ketchup. Jesus, this man must have a direct line to heaven, or at least their kitchen. I hummed my approval.

‘Why wouldn’t you tell him?’ I asked. ‘He’d be a damn good one. He took me in his stride, that’s for sure. And I’ve seen some that never realized what they were.’ I paused around a bite of eggs, frowning. ‘The results, in the end, weren’t...good.’

Jim frowned a little, too. ‘No, they aren’t, but I had to weigh my options. Telling John he was in any way related to the things he hunts and kills would break him, more than his never reaching his full potential.’

‘He’s already broken,’ I said. Jim’s eyes darted to mine and he scowled hard. I shrugged, taking another huge bite of waffle. ‘Just telling it like it is.’

Jim relaxed a little, resigned. ‘You’re right. I keep hoping that somehow, someday he’ll be able to lay his anger to rest. But those days are slipping away.’ His gaze rose to the ceiling, perhaps picturing a room above him where the boy Dean was resting under the watchful gaze of his brother. ‘If he’s not careful, he’ll lose them both.’

‘He’ll be okay?’ I asked. ‘Dean?’

‘Yes,’ Jim nodded. ‘Thanks to you.’

‘I just pointed the way,’ I said, forking up some eggs. ‘The car did most of the work.’

Jim smiled again. ‘Yes, she’s quite special. She’s been home and guardian to those three for a good many years.’ His voice went a little wistful, ‘I hope she knows how very much she’s loved.’

‘Oh, she does,’ I assured him. ‘She does.’

Jim lifted an eyebrow briefly, but then nodded. ‘That’s good to hear.’

We sat in silence for a few minutes while I finished my breakfast, running my finger across the plate to get the last dregs of syrup. Without looking up, I said, ‘He loves them. Very much.’

‘Oh, I know,’ Jim said softly. ‘No man on earth could love his boys more than John Winchester. I just wish they knew that.’

‘They will one day,’ I said, thinking of my own mother. She hadn’t been very good at the mother thing. Maybe because she wasn’t meant for it. Some people just weren’t, but they did it anyway because it was what everyone around them was doing, and it was hard to buck the board of trade consciously or not sometimes. My relationship, if I even had one, had been pretty poor with my mom, but I came to realize over the years since my death that she did love me—in her own way. 

‘How long can you stay?’ Jim asked.

I looked out the front window at the waking world. The sun was painting everything in deep oranges and pinks not yet washed out by its bright white light. I looked down at the sleeves of the oversized hoodie engulfing me and drew my hands up inside, pulling them under my chin and reveling in Sam’s still clinging, living warmth.

‘Sunset,’ I answered. I stood and picked up the tray that had held my breakfast. ‘But my work here is done, and I should go before then.’

Jim only nodded and stood himself, leading me to the kitchen and taking the dishes from the tray and setting them in the sink. My eyes strayed to the stairs behind us.

‘Can I see them,’ I asked quietly, ‘before I go?’

Jim glanced upward, brows pulled together. ‘Dean needs rest...’

‘I don’t want to talk. Just see them,’ I clarified. I wasn’t sure why it was important. Maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was just an unconscious delay tactic on my part.

Jim paused in thought, but then nodded and moved by me in the small space to lead me up the stairs.

The door to the right of the landing was adjacent and there was a soft light coming from inside. I caught the scent of lavender and something else in the air.

‘Incense and candles,’ Jim said. ‘To help with his pain while he heals.’

I nodded wordlessly and crept to the door when he motioned me forward with a finger to his lips. The room was dark but for the candlelight, cast entirely in shadows, but that was no challenge to my eyes. I could see Sam on a chair by the head of the bed, curled over and around his brother’s head, one hand resting on Dean’s heart. I could tell even in the low light that Dean’s color was improved. He was still feverish, but he was quiet now, no longer delirious, and his breathing was slower and deeper. His face was turned toward Sam’s on the shared pillow and their foreheads rested together.

I felt Jim at my shoulder, a tension in him that I didn’t understand, like he was on guard against something. I cast him a glance, smiling gently. ‘They love each other.’

Jim stared at me for a moment, then nodded.

I stepped a little further into the room and pulled the hoodie off over my head.

‘Rose...’

I turned back to Jim, still smiling. ‘Thank you for breakfast,’ I whispered. ‘Your waffles really are second to none.’ I stepped up to Sam, draping the hoodie ever so carefully around his shoulders so as not to wake him. ‘Tell them that when I see their Lady again, I’ll be sure to tell her that her boys are safe and sound.’

And then I let go.

The Last Dance blinked her bright, inviting neon into the tumultuous dark of the Twilight, and I sighed, shoved my hands into my pockets again, and started across the parking lot, thinking about how to sweet talk the resident baen sidhi into a chocolate malted.

Sam stirred when Dean’s chest hitched under his hand. The room had gone dark, the candles burned out, and the only light was the soft multicolored glow from the Christmas tree downstairs. The only sound was his brother’s breathing and the gentle creak of the rocker in the front room.

‘There was a girl,’Dean rasped.

Sam moved his head enough to press his lips to Dean’s forehead. ‘Yes. Rose. She got you home.’

‘She was...’ Dean drifted off, sleep reaching for him again.

Sam shifted a little, and pressed his lips to Dean’s forehead and temple again, splaying his fingers wide over his brother’s chest, feeling the steady rise and fall.

‘She was something special,’ he whispered.

John had been driving for hours, too many hours. Jim had asked him to stay, almost demanded it, but the hunt called him, and he couldn’t face Sam. Not yet. The anger in his younger son’s eyes was a palpable thing, a weight he couldn’t bear on top of the guilt and fear of almost losing Dean. His eyes stung. From the dry air, he told himself. He blinked them fiercely and tried to focus on the road ahead. He was tired, past the point of exhaustion, drained from the flight to Jim’s.

Rose. If it hadn’t been for Rose...

He blinked again, realizing he’d tried to drift off at the wheel, but the car had held steady.

_Sleep._

The command came silently into his mind. He tried to resist, knew that he couldn’t let his eyes drift closed again or the darkness behind them would take him.

_Sleep. I know the way._

John’s head bobbed and his eyes closed.

And the car kept going, flying straight and true down the highway, driving on into the night.

_Thank you, Rose._


End file.
